The Copper Mines
16 August, 2022
With a frost-slick bike, a pack full of snacks, and fully-charged dog, I left the cabin with the early sunrise. The brush along the gravel roadsides held a muted glitter of dew under the dully dappled sky, and the woods were silent as we made our way into the hills towards the historic mining town of Kennicott. After a quick 3.5 miles, we rolled across a bridge and into a canyon of red-painted wooden buildings punched with temptingly spooky windows.
Tucked between the brittle age of abandoned buildings, a similarly-styled new structure bore the sign of the National Park Service. Inside, a cheerful ranger in her 60s described the trails leading into the mountains above and the glaciers adjacent to the ghost town. I was looking for a climb that offered views, historical sites, and the promise of sore legs the following morning. A 4,0000 ft ascent to the ridgeline perch of Bonanza Mine fit the bill, so I registered our hike plan and, leaving the bike, we started on foot up the path into the mountains to the east.
The first part of the trail climbed a steep road of rutted mud through switchbacks cut through dense foliage. We kept a quick pace, and as the day warmed into the mid-50s, the close thickets became oppressively warm and damp.
The second half of the trail, my favorite, emerged from the thickets onto a meadowy shelf below the steeper inclines before climbing towards the peaks. The trail curved north into a bowl, traversing up through springy tundra and crumbling scree before curving back on the final ascent to a ridge overlooking the wider valley of Kennicott Glacier to the west. The shattered skeletons of Bonanza Mine’s copper operation clung to the mountainside just below the ridge line at the top of the bowl.
Scrambling up the slope, skirting the wreckage and crossing old minecart tracks, I delighted in searching out artifacts that had slowly rusted their way into the landscape after a century of disuse. While I’m generally more interested in the natural world than in structures or items of human origin, at a certain point the anthropogenic reaches an age at which, in my imagination, it can transmute into part of the landscape. In my mind, these discarded items become mysterious vessels from the past, holding tiny story fragments that whisper the history of the place where they lie, abandoned, in the present.
After passing through the outbuildings, we chanced the last skittering stretch of scree and climbed to the prow of the ridge. Tucking ourselves out of the wind under a rocky outcrop, we shared a meal of dried fruit and salmon jerky (me) and kibble (Ullr), watching the unending shift of clouds and light over the glacier below. A rain shower came and went, and as veils of heavier cloud sank over the far mountains, I repacked our gear and we started down into the valley.
We made good time on the return trip, arriving in the mill town an hour before sunset and stretching the remaining daylight to cover a mellow wander up one of the valley trails above the glacial terminus. The wind gave way to a sleepy evening calm, and with a final pulse of gold, the sun dropped away between distant mountains, and the colors ebbed and followed. In the last of the subarctic twilight, we returned to my bicycle for a final roll down towards the river and cabin.
